Tag - awa

 
 

AWA

Koenji-based dance troupe Tengu-ren performs at an Awa odori event in Tokyo's Kagurazaka neighborhood a month before the Koenji Awa Odori.
CULTURE / Longform
Aug 26, 2023
The party returns to Koenji
While the COVID-19 pandemic put a temporary pause to one of Tokyo’s biggest festivals, its dancers never stopped practicing their steps.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 30, 2017
Magazine aims to attract more non-Japanese to Tokushima's Awa Odori festival
"The dancers are fools. The spectators are fools. Both are fools alike, so why not dance?"
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Apr 8, 2017
Awa Mystery Dinners: Venturing into the unknown with an appetite
"I was a little nervous about going into this restaurant at first," says Hawaiian Lance Kita as he leads our small group to a small windowless shop. We approach a sliding door with slotted wood, resembling a bamboo forest.
Japan Times
CULTURE
Aug 25, 2016
Koenji's Awa Odori festival celebrates 60 years
For the past few weeks, visitors and residents in Koenji have been haunted by a song — a plaintive, pentatonic melody that seems to circle endlessly, never quite resolving. You can hear it playing over speakers on the station platform just before the train doors close. It's there again as you walk down the Pal shopping arcade, under banners advertising the area's most famous event.
CULTURE / Music
May 15, 2016
Ayumi Hamasaki takes a note from Beyonce with sudden 'M(a)de In Japan' release
Streaming services remain a fledgling part of the Japanese music industry, but the major players are learning from their Western counterparts. Last week, Avex "surprised" J-pop fans with Ayumi Hamasaki's new album "M(a)de In Japan" (with the "a" being her own distinctive logo) on the label's AWA platform. It's not a total shocker, as Hamasaki has talked about her 17th full-length before, but the timing was sudden.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 27, 2015
Does the future of Japanese music depend on streaming services?
When music consultant Mikiro Enomoto asked a class of Kyoto Seika University students how they listened to new music last year, he reckons 80 percent of them mentioned YouTube or YouTube-linked sites. When he asked the same question to this year's class, almost all of them said they don't bother looking for new music anymore.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jun 20, 2015
Dive into the culture of Minamiboso
It is just after sunset and hundreds of people have gathered around the docking bays of Minamiboso on the southern edge of Chiba Prefecture. As men bang away on taiko drums, dozens of women emerge from a hilltop shrine. Dressed head-to-toe in white outfits and wearing goggles on their heads, they carry lit bamboo torches and walk, two-by-two, toward the docks. These are ama (female divers), and as they wade into the water to form a circle, onlookers watch in near silence — save for the sound of digital and analog shutters.
Japan Times
CULTURE
Jun 18, 2015
A festival for every weekend of your summer
Festivals (matsuri) of all kinds are a staple of Japanese culture and summer is the premier season to experience them. In recent years, the country has seen a bit of a boom in cultural festivals, to the point that it's possible to book every weekend of your summer around them. We're here to help by highlighting the best "fests" happening over the next three months.

Longform

Later this month, author Shogo Imamura will open Honmaru, a bookstore that allows other businesses to rent its shelves. It's part of a wave of ideas Japanese booksellers are trying to compete with online spaces.
The story isn't over for Japan's bookstores